


Cold Smoke Seeping Out of Colder Throats

by steepled_fingers



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: 1940s, Alternate Universe - Human, Alternate Universe - Spies & Secret Agents, Cold War, Dubious Science, Espionage, F/M, Gen, Science
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-13
Updated: 2014-11-13
Packaged: 2018-02-25 05:18:09
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 10
Words: 6,619
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2609906
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/steepled_fingers/pseuds/steepled_fingers
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Post-WW2, as the Cold War is getting traction. </p><p>What if Loki were a Russian agent embedded at MI6?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is in Third Person Limited POV and Loki's worldview colours his perception of others, so, of course, he's not particularly reliable in his interpretations.

When it began, the Russians chose the age-old honey trap approach to recruitment, but Natasha didn’t even need to take off her lipstick that night. She had approached him at the Cambridge library without pretence, it was a gamble and he admired it. They had talked into the early hours of the morning, fawning over each other’s minds fuelled only by coffee and cigarettes. In the past, when pondering this turning point he has wondered how much had been a manipulation after all, or had they really fallen in something like love with each other. He realised later that in her own way she cherished the night they met, hoarding it the way she hoards all her moments of realness. A moment of genuine affinity, even if fleeting, that they both recognised and accepted. Proof that it was possible for her. Proof it was possible for him too.

It seemed so easy then, when he was eighteen, he defected because he had wanted to align himself with something that felt true and Natasha had never lied to him. At a time when everything around him was a lie. The West, the life he was leading, his home, his father. He had first kissed her when he brought her the means to dismantle his father's munitions empire. She had let herself indulge him as he held her to him sighing in contentment into her hair and they had celebrated with a pre-war vintage she had somehow procured.

Later, he recognised some of the weapons technology he had stolen from Odin being applied by the Russian military, and surprised himself by finding this slightly jarring. 

By the time the war was over he was done deluding himself into thinking he was a decent human being, he knows that he has done nothing for an allegiance to some belief in a greater good, or to a place he’s never known and never seen. All he knows is that he is addicted to the heady rush of the game, the lies and manipulation, and the bone-deep satisfaction of winning. There were days when he was not quite sure anymore whether he’d ever had any altruistic motives but this is hard to admit even to himself. Some days he managed to convince himself he does it for Natasha. In a lot of ways she is his Mother Russia; she is in simple fact where his allegiances lie. Even so, he knows what he sees is a kind of construction, just as much as what she sees of him is not exactly real either. They are versions of truth, calculated to yield the right results and foster the right relationship. But despite this, there are those days when he searches for something to cling to and Natasha is all there is for him to find. He knows she has some compassion for him at those times, so long as they never contravene any of her (their?) objectives. That is how he knows she has true affection for him, because they let each other pretend at comforting and being comforted. The gesture itself is enough to gain some solace from.

Sometimes they play their parts even when they are alone, "I love you," she might tell him with a sardonic yet regretful smile and he will return her smile, a smile full of teeth, almost as if in a grimace, "I love you too, Natalia." He might whisper back. Enacting a domestic scene like a private joke, neither of them mean it the way others do when they say such things to each other, but they still mean it in their own way.

While he remained convinced she has never told him a lie, Natasha nevertheless came to him with her mask in place, he still doesn't know if she had ever been a true believer, her vulnerabilities have been so successfully subsumed that he can only extrapolate what is in her past by the nature of her mask. He thinks he sees the glimpses underneath when she mentions the Red Room with an unconscious hush, but inherently if he is nothing else he is familiar with the nature of masks, so he will always be suspicious of exactly how much she is really willing to concede of how she came to be, even to herself when she is alone. In contrast, she is by necessity very familiar with his dossier and it has helped her create their false rapport, as well as more importantly their real intimacy. This is the way Mother Russia has forced her comrades into trusting her and Natasha has always, as a matter of simple fact, held it to him like a knife to his throat, neither of them see a point in pretending their dynamic isn’t complicated.

But still, he knows this is a kind of loving, this sense of complicity, and if it is all he will ever have in his life, he is contented in the knowledge that it has come of the choices he has in full consciousness made.


	2. Chapter 2

Natasha leaves when Moscow decides she is needed back in the field. The night before, they drink the vodka she had been saving and she whispers do svidaniya, moya lyubov into his ear. She had never before spoken to him in her mother tongue. He can’t say it back because it hurts to be given this when she’ll be gone soon, but he knows she needed to share it with him before the chance is gone.

He himself had received his own orders from Moscow, which is how he found himself lunching with the same old Cambridge set that he had always despised, albeit this time in exotic locations. MI6 was both at once a joke and a bore. He was well admired, though this was possibly as much for his ancient breeding as for the fine cut of his jib. The old boys were lulled by how English he looked and sounded, even amused by Odin's pretensions at 'reclaiming' Norse roots. His peers were attracted to the carefully calibrated whiff of superiority he exuded, they vied with each other to be the first to divulge things to him. It was ludicrous, he felt embarrassed for them.

At least the Secret Service afforded him a way to live out his idle childhood fantasies of being an adventurer, he had wanted to go exploring the Congo, climbing the Andes, collecting interesting artefacts and stories. Now he was collecting data in back rooms of tea houses in Karachi, stealing information from militia groups in Damascus, exfiltrating intelligence assets from Istanbul sometimes for Britain, sometimes for Russia. And of course siphoning British secrets out of MI6. These games were what he lived for, he was very good at it.

His new MGB contact, Yuri, was a harmless looking old man in possession of a stoop, a good number of cardigans and a hesitant speaking voice, who ran a charming little bookstore. He believed the position was something of a retirement gift for services rendered during the war. He didn’t ask because he could see there was something wholly unpleasant behind the man’s eyes.

He saw Natasha once, while on reconnaissance in Beirut, she had seen him too. She was posing as an American journalist, he was posing as an official from the Foreign Ministry, such was MI6's default legend, half of the Ministry is actually from the Service. More than anything the moment he had seen her, he had understood how terribly he missed her and wanted to speak with her, even something innocuous and casual would have felt like a balm. But they would both be long dead if they could not control simple impulses like that.


	3. Chapter 3

Two years after Beirut, he came home to find her sitting at his kitchen table, drinking his brandy, smoking his cigarettes. "Hello dear." She says, with a slight smirk as if no time had passed. He sees that she has a file with her, but she stands up and initiates a surprisingly long embrace. It seems like she had been missing him too.

She kisses him chastely, purely out of her own affection. He holds onto her hip, appreciating that he can simply reach out to do so again.

"You're here," he says, it is everything and nothing of what he has wanted to say. But really, the truth is she already knows it all and there is nothing to say. "What's in the file?"

She stands there with a hand in his and smiles up at him, seeming just to bask in their togetherness before they both sit down to the business at hand. She already has a glass out for him, and now pours him a measure of the brandy. "A mathematician."

"Who is it?" He means why come to me.

"Jane Foster." She takes a drag of her cigarette.

He huffs a disbelieving laugh into his brandy glass before taking a swallow, "Thor's sweetheart."

"She is dangerous. Working on long range missile trajectories for the U.S. Navy."

"Right. What’s the objective?"

"Just reconnaissance for now. She could be valuable but what would it take for her to sway is the question."

"All right, I'll look at her file." He puts the file she had slid across the table to him aside pointedly. She seems pleased by this as she eyes him over her glass and finishes her brandy. 

He takes her out for a curry at his local Indian place. "I have really missed London." She sighed in contentment, "Can't get a decent Vindaloo where I've been."

It may have sounded like an invitation to ask, but he knows better. Instead he drinks his tea, trying to decide whether the current kitchen-sink affection she was sharing with him was authentic. He remembers them playing at domesticity before, but not this kind of real intimate looseness. She has changed in their time apart, and he is not sure what is the mask and what is her anymore. When they part ways, she strokes the nape of his neck fondly, it's likely he won't see her again for a while.

When he gets round to it, Jane Foster's file proves to be quite the read, he has to admit to being impressed. During the war she had ties to the Manhattan Project, working on an Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculator, creating a version of Charles Babbage's analytical engine around the same time Turing had been working on it at Bletchley Park. Since then she has continued to work for U.S. Defence on their ICBM programme. She does not seem like the kind of person who has since thought twice about the application of her research to the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki into the dark ages. As Natasha had said, she is dangerous. It seemed improbable that this woman would choose to be with the likes of Thor.


	4. Chapter 4

While his contact with Thor has been sporadic since he had 'joined the Foreign Ministry' and Thor had joined the Royal Air Force, he did nevertheless consider it prudent to be genial if distant with his brother. Loki called to inform Thor he was home between postings and found Thor to be genuinely pleased, having wanted to introduce Jane to Loki for some time. Loki had received a number of letters from Thor over the last two years mentioning her, they had met in Okinawa in the aftermath during reconstruction, and Thor had made it obvious she had become important to him. Thor has always been quick to his emotions and steadfast in his conviction so the direction of their relationship was predictable from the moment he spoke of her. Loki remembers a letter from him last year detailing the row he'd had with Odin when he had introduced Jane. Pater had taken exception to her being both American and Jewish and had found a way to liken her to a goat. At the time Loki had smiled in amusement while he penned some superficial platitudes and vague commiserations in response and couldn't help revelling in some petty vindication in finding Thor at odds with the man after being subjected to long ignored pleadings for Loki to ‘be the reasonable one’.

But while he was willing to endure Thor’s bluff, ebullient company, he recognised that he should meet Jane Foster on her own, create a rapport that is independent of Thor, and he conjured up a small assignment so that he could run into her at the University of London where she was collaborating with a Professor Selvig on her research. The Service had their own dossier on her, much the same as what Natasha had provided him with, and gladly gave him leave to pry some American secrets out of her if he liked. He was told to openly court collaboration between MI6 and U.S. Naval intelligence.

He finds her staring blankly at the University cafeteria menu mumbling “Sea Bass” repeatedly under her breath and takes a moment just to watch her. One thing he can say upon observing Dr. Foster in real life is that she is unassuming in a way that isn't captured in the photos he had been given. She seems earnest and guileless, she is wont to pouting unconsciously in concentration as if she has no idea that she has the potential to be Oppenheimer in a pair of kitten heels, it is fascinating if extremely disconcerting. 

When she comes out of her reverie she is the one to approach him, as he predicted, recognising him right away from old photos Thor is sentimental enough to keep and have shown her. He learns that the Foreign Ministry exploits he'd been required to fabricate for Thor in his irregular letters have been recounted to her fondly. She nervously pushes her hair behind her ear frequently while introducing herself. When he asks about her work at the University her nervous tics disappear and she is instantly able to look him in the eyes when speaking. To hear her tell it, she is a mathematician, and physicist, she is developing a computational language and in a stroke of luck the U.S. government has been kind enough to fund her research. The work itself is groundbreaking and Jane exhibits a level of zeal for it that is just as startling as her otherwise girlishly sweet demeanor. When they speak of Thor she becomes by turns pleased and fond, but also reticent, almost embarrassed and somewhat confused as to what to say, and Loki realises that Thor is the one who drives the relationship, because Jane cannot see much past her coffee and her datasets. She seems consistent in her prevarication between pleasant surprise and distracted annoyance that Thor holds her in his affections as he does. He can see how this is attractive to Thor, who likes a challenge.

Loki continues to flatter Jane by being supremely interested in her work and enquiring after possible application by the Foreign Ministry. He is genuine in his interest, he can recognise that she is opening up a new paradigm and not just for Defense, this is the sort of thing which could change how people understood and interact with the world. She gushes about how inspirational it was to see the Difference Engine at the London Science Museum built by Scheutz based on Babbage’s drawings as if it were a religious experience, and for her, he supposes it must have been akin to one. She speaks with an embarrassed whisper of wanting to somehow find a way of meeting Turing, not realising Turing is her peer, and not her superior in intellect. He mentions his admiration for Lovelace, and she literally claps her hands with joy at finding a fellow enthusiast. And at the end of it, this one casual conversation became incredibly fruitful as she is clearly not one for circumspection, and she volunteers to show him some of her algorithms and concept mapping. Did she have so little recognition of the importance of her work that she willingly shows it to any and all strangers?

He meets Selvig, whom Jane introduces as her mentor, and the two indulge in some enthusiastic mutual admiration. Selvig, though it is obvious that he too is formidable in intellect, seems distractible and perhaps somewhat lacking in the drive and focus which Jane seems to have in abundance. He identifies himself to Loki as a theoretical physicist turned self-taught engineer, while claiming that Jane prefers to work on the 'higher level stuff'. Meeting Selvig and seeing the way he dotes on Jane makes Loki's chest feel tight. It's new, and unexpected, and he leaves it unexamined.

Jane shows him the analytical tables and hierarchical mapping of semantic rules of her language, and explains her thought processes, which are based on how to deconstruct ancient languages as much as on mathematical imperatives of consistent truth. It is breathtaking both in scope and application though it probably would do him no good to tell her he thinks as much. Before he takes his leave, he manages to install recording devices in both her office and the laboratory. He will also have to make sure that the ones he places at Thor's apartment will be effective.


	5. Chapter 5

It could be said that Thor's brand of infectious affability is enough to sustain a friendship all on its own. Even Loki knows what it is like to find himself succumbing to it, despite having grown up with Thor and thus having no illusions as to Thor's less endearing behaviours. He wonders whether it would be enough to sustain a marriage, though he supposes the point is moot where Jane is concerned. He cannot let Thor marry this woman.

The woman in question seems distracted from their dinner, and cannot focus on the task at hand of being sociable in company, it is a stark contrast to the ebullience and camaraderie they had shared at her lab. Loki is polite with Thor, but their old familiarity has gone in the intervening years since their childhood closeness, and while this distance was something Loki had actively cultivated, he can now briefly acknowledge to himself a sense of loss. He can see clearly on Thor's face how keenly he has missed their old selves, how he has kept wishing for ways to revitalise their kinship. Thor is yet hopeful even now that they may find a way back. 

When Loki and Thor adjourn to the Club for a smoke and a drink, Jane is delighted to stay behind, jumping at the chance to be alone with the blackboard in the office Loki had seen a glimpse of through a door ajar. He will need a closer look at that board, and a way to photograph it.

When they reach the club, Loki is briefly ruffled at the thought of this being an ambush, and the possibility of meeting with their father in there, and, while he is sure Thor cannot read his discomfort he nevertheless knows the fullness of this history enough to predict this. "Don't worry, I've inherited the Club. Father never spends time here anymore, in fact he's rarely in London these days."

"Just like the old man to shutter himself away at the country house. I'd send him a copy of 'Oblomov' but I'm afraid he'd find it offensive for being Russian instead of for the direct comparison I would be drawing." They each hand their coats to the coat-check, where Thor is greeted with familiarity and Loki is eyed, with a somewhat perplexed look.

"No more dreary Russian literature please Loki, and besides I thought Pater was persona non grata to you, would you break your long silence for a joke so slight?" As they settle in with their snifters, Loki is aware of the other patrons in the room, some of whom he recognises as Service. Thor nods to these people as acquaintances but no more than that. 

"No, I wouldn't, I was speaking purely hypothetically." Thor rolled his eyes in response but nothing else. Loki is glad of the reprieve he's getting from the usual lecture and if he has Jane to thank for this, then he would have gladly welcomed her to the family, were it not for her other activities she would be a perfect buffer for those awkward conversations.

"Let's not speak of him, lest we speak ill. It has been too many years of the same and I'm tired of it." Thor had never admitted defeat on the subject before. Loki takes a long drag on his cigar in order to savour this development. The smoke burns through and warms his chest.

"As am I, so, now that I have my drink, let me toast to your lovely Jane, may she be as sweet as she is pretty." He smiles at Thor with as much earnestness as he can muster.

"Oh Loki, she is unlike anyone else, a truly brilliant mind. I will tell you freely that I admire her." Thor's returning smile is true, and uncomplicated. Loki begins to suspect Jane's distracted demeanour is actually a common occurrence when in company. Odin would not have known what to make of her.

"There's no need as I can see that clearly when you are with her."

"She told me that you visited the lab the other day."

"Yes, I met Professor Selvig, and Jane herself showed me some of her work, it's quite incredible." 

"It really is. It seems to be at a turning point, I know because she forgets to eat." Thor says this with so much fondness and displays a level of consideration Loki has never seen before in him.

"She's changed you." He says it with perhaps too much awe, and not with quite the tone of jocularity he was aiming for.

"I can admit that I find myself a better man for loving her."

This time Loki achieves the mischievous smile he had been trying for, "well she is singular indeed, a miracle worker."


	6. Chapter 6

He spends more time in Jane's company at the lab than his pretence of Foreign Ministry cooperation would account for but neither Jane nor Erik have glanced at him askance. Jane's frenetic energy is as infectious as her passionate focus on the task at hand. Her worldview has narrowed to what was in these rooms; to Erik and the machine they are building together and to the DNA which dictates how this machine would 'think'.

Whenever he is there, he feels awash in their industriousness. Selvig is amiable and encouraging in the very best way, guiding Jane's thinking and theses development. Loki, as a natural polyglot, offers some insights from his days conjugating Latin which Jane insists are useful. Thor contributes by providing lunch occasionally, though, as a captain of industry since taking over as head of their father's company, he finds it difficult to make appearances at the lab himself. The days he does come are surprisingly merry, Loki admits. Jane enthusiastically tries to encompass his broad frame in her embrace, grateful for his love and support, and Loki feels something akin to jealousy at their freely given affection.

Jane is not far away from trialling her new improvements on the calculation generator she and Erik have been building, and Loki is startled to realise that the two of them see the work as utterly beyond any ethical imperative. She isn't naive she is just fearless of repercussion. Jane believes it is an inevitability of human evolution that cannot be thwarted and has the audacity to think of the enmity between East and West as peripheral and passing; a momentary paranoia that has benefited her because she has been given the means to pursue this work, to her, the application of it will be to all aspects of modern life. Erik’s view is that they will be able to make data behave like electricity one day: as if it were intrinsic. 

“Edison wasn’t afraid.” Erik would say.

“But Oppenheimer was.” Loki would counter.

“But he doesn’t regret the discovery itself! This is a truth that lives in the world, it will not go untapped, and why shouldn’t it be us who tap it.” Jane answers.

Jane wants to be able to make the quantitative study of anything and everything possible, including weighting decision making and giving mathematical value to morality. She wants to solve humanity as if it were an equation. Her confusion over Thor makes sense to him now, it must be perplexing to try solving their relationship as if it was made up of so many accountable variables. Loki is beginning to suspect that Thor appeals to Jane more as a conundrum than as a man and he can't help feeling if that is the case it is worse than what he has in his own life of lies and half-truths.

He finds it easy to enjoy their company, appreciate the camaraderie, but the dangers they all so blithely accept as par for the course of science for the sake of itself means he finds it just as easy to write up his regular reports about their progress for Natasha.

One evening after Selvig had left, he finds himself alone with Jane for the first time. They share a quiet moment over coffee and cigarettes and he is reminded of that night with Natasha. "Why do you hang around, Loki?" Jane asks into the gathering gloom, she is nothing if not direct though she has judiciously waited for them to be alone to ask the question.

"Don't you want me to?" He asks instead of replying.

"We love having you here, Erik and I, and you give me so much to think about, but who are you really? Why would the Ministry let you come here day after day?" Her soft almost tremulous voice belies a steely will.

"Surely you know by now that I'm not from the Ministry?"

"I would like to hear you say it, if it's all the same to you."

"All right, MI6 has asked me to keep an eye on your work." He shrugs as if his spying were of no consequence, "cooperation among allies would be desirable don't you agree?"

She sighs, somewhat frustrated, "You spooks with all your cloak and dagger, is it necessary here?"

"I wanted to get the measure of you first myself. This is going to attract a fair amount of attention, it becomes quite the circus."

"And?"

"And I didn't want to involve Thor in that circus more than was necessary."

"You don't want Thor read in." It wasn't a question, she had suspected as much.

"No. If at all possible I would like to leave him be."

She nods at this. Maybe she understands more than just numbers and maybe Thor is more than just an equation for her to solve after all. Irrationally he thinks about what it is like for Thor to kiss her.

"I don't really want to keep things from him, but he’s served his country, he’s earned the right to live his life now and that is all he wants."

Loki tells the truth however it suits him, "If you say nothing, he would be safe from the likes of me."

"Does Odin know?"

The lit end of his cigarette sparks as he breathes in the smoke, "No."

"What happened between you and Odin? Thor won't talk about it."

It's not so hard to tell her, not in the dark like this, when she is only lit in profile by a small desk lamp. Not when he can't see her eyes on him. "When Thor and I were 16 and 15, our mother was dying. Cervical cancer. Our father insisted he could find a way to save her, so he put her into experimental trial after trial, subjecting her to a parade of different quacks and butchers. They took so many pieces of her chasing the malignancy, trying to cut it out." Loki says it all flatly, the story is old and worn, he flicks some ash into the ashtray. Jane stays completely still.

"She was tired, I knew it, Thor knew it. But Odin was stubborn, he was at the forefront of science, invincible, and he refused to admit defeat. He wouldn't hear her when she pleaded with him to let her have some peace. I railed at him for his pride, Thor could not look at him.

"The night mother died, I was the one watching over her. She was a shell, a skeleton, wheezing and sunken eyed. Weakened by the cancer as well as our Father's ministrations, I know it. But she gave me a gift that day, she told me I was not their natural born child, though there is no question that she loved me as she would have if I were. Thor doesn’t know that he and I are not blood. It seemed heartless to leave him alone after mother had gone, but nevertheless I find it separates us anyway." Loki sighs, this is just so much scar tissue now.

"Odin’s hubris robbed our mother of her dignity, and she suffered greatly in the last two years. Afterward, he had the audacity to be broken, but not only by her loss, by his failure. I have not spoken to him since the day she died. I will not forgive him."

He finds himself enveloped by Jane's arms, she is holding him to her, as a mother would a child, as if to take some of his burden. "Please, don't pity me, I might be able to see who he is, but I can see who I am just as well."

She leans away from him, but keeps a hand on his cheek, "You are a man who cannot forgive."

"Not even the smallest of petty hurts." He admits ruefully, his cigarette forgotten in the ashtray.

They are silent for a while and she lets go of his face. "I'll keep your secrets, Loki. But I'll be keeping my own as well. If you want full access to this research, you can’t keep stealing it." She is holding his hand, contemplating his palm as she says it. He wants her to bring it up to her own cheek, but she doesn't.

He nods, and slips his hand from hers, “You just want to meet Turing.” He says trying to lighten the tone.

She accepts the turn in the conversation and smiles up at him, “I believe in a collaborative approach. No man is an island.”

“Alan is an insufferable know-it-all, I might as well tell you that now.”

She laughs brightly as if they weren’t sitting in the dark where he had laid a part of himself bare amongst the burnt out cigarettes and paper coffee cups.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Warning, slight smut ahead in this chapter.

Thor is not made aware of the details of the project’s new status, only that it has become classified, and moved off campus to a more secure site. Jane removes her blackboard from his home office. Meanwhile MI6 has been largely cooperative in sharing intelligence, but insistent that the bill is footed by the Americans. Erik is in his element, bouncing from idea to idea, holding the attention of his peers. 

Even though people surround them, ever since that first time, Loki and Jane find themselves routinely alone together at the end of the night sharing terrible coffee before finding they have no more excuses to delay their dinner with Thor. So when Jane leans across her desk and kisses Loki, she does so without anymore preamble than to turn off her desk lamp. He didn’t invite her to, but he didn’t turn her away. 

He kisses her back, he wants this. She tastes of the smoke from their last cigarette. He is pulling her towards him by the shoulders so she is standing in front of him and she’s unzipping her pencil skirt so that he can push it urgently up around her waist as she fumbles with the buttons on his shirt in the darkness. With his hands on her thighs, he can feel the straps of her garter fastened to her stockings as he pulls her fully into his lap, and then travelling further up, her lace covered quim is warm and damp to his touch, he slides his fingers underneath and into her wet snatch. She kisses his mouth, breath heavy, before she grinds against his fingers. She rides his fingers and whimpers into the side of his neck until she comes. She lets him pull his fingers from her slowly, but her flimsy underwear is torn at the seam from her exertions. He is so hard, pressed against her thigh and he helps her to release his cock from his trousers before she sinks down on him, she sighs in satisfaction and he holds her flush against him knowing he will have her stains on his pants. He rocks his pelvis into her as she holds herself still, receiving his cock, the heat is unbearably good and he sets a staccato pace. When he makes to pull out she shakes her head, panting, "No. No. Stay." She clutches against him so that he spills inside of her and she comes again, with his seed still warm. In the aftermath, he kisses her slowly, exploring her mouth, luxuriating in her plush swollen lips, teasing her darting tongue with his. 

"I've wanted you since the first day we met." Her breath shudders as she says it.

He cups her face in his hands, "you have me." And in that moment he tells her the truth, because there is nothing else but her in the darkness.

That night, she goes to meet with Thor for dinner on her own.


	8. Chapter 8

He feels like he’s real when he’s with Jane, like there’s now a solidity to his form. When they have sex in the back room behind the mimeograph in her new government funded lab, or when they argue about the line between discovering objective reality and practicing responsible science, or when they eat together with Erik and the others that MI6 had rounded up to join the team. He is no longer separate or superior, he is part of the world.

Jane doesn’t hesitate in breaking things off with Thor, but stops short of telling him the real reason why. He is in disbelief at first not understanding how it could go wrong when he loved her so faithfully and then incredibly hurt to realize that she’d been slowly extricating herself from his life for quite some time now. 

“I should have known she’d made her decision when she took her blackboard.” Thor laments how unprepared he was. “Her work has always meant everything to her. I thought she was endearingly absent-minded, but the thing of it is she just didn’t love me. She was only ever fond of me.”

“Did she say so?”

“She said she realised our lives would never be compatible. She told me she couldn’t live in the life I wanted. The home, the children and the summer holidays in Greece. But I’ve never asked her to give anything up, to change and I’m not sure that it couldn’t have worked if we’d tried.”

“Would it have been enough for you, picking over the remains of her affection and attention after everything else had gone into her work?”

“Please Loki, don’t try to convince me that this was a kindness. She doesn’t love me, that is the realisation she came to.”

Loki tends to his brother as best he can but while he regrets that this comes at Thor’s expense, he cannot regret that Jane loves him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Poor Thor, he's a stand up guy.


	9. Chapter 9

He’s decided to burn Moscow, give MI6 every name and every detail he’d ever known except Natasha. Russia are a very real threat to him and Jane now, and he can’t afford not to do it. But he hesitates, because even if he doesn’t burn her, he knows how keenly Natasha will feel the disappointment in him. The shape of life that they had moulded together has come apart. 

He wonders whether she would turn for him. He would be putting her in just as much danger if he does this. He tries to find a rationalisation to her for his actions that he can stomach, but he can’t. She will hate him, but would she still join him for her safety? Her other choices will be untenable.

He convinces himself that he can make this happen and contacts her through Yuri at the bookstore.

The back room of the bar is clean, but the light is dim and buzzing when he arrives. She’s already there leaning against the enamel sink, one arm folded across her, she holds her elbow with one hand and a gun in the other, pointed up casually towards the ceiling and to the side. Her face is all mask.

“You can’t be serious, darling.” She greets him with.

She knows. “Natasha, I am.” He responds calmly, but he eyes the weapon in her hand. He summons all the confidence he can and says, “but I won’t game you, you know the sales pitch. Come with me.”

“Back to being Natasha now, I see. No longer any ironic endearments?”

“What’s the use in lying to you like that, that time is over now, don’t you think?” He says gently.

“It doesn’t have to be.” She whispers it, lowering the gun to her side and stepping closer to catch the side of his face with her free hand. She searches his face beseechingly. 

He catches her hand in his own, holding it. “Come with me.”

She leans her forehead against his, “And what are the terms of this negotiation? What could I have if I do?”

“You’ll be alive, I can protect you.” 

She pulls her hand out of his, and steps back again. “Russia will try to put me down and you want to save me by what, sticking me in some dingy caravan park to rot for the rest of my days? No, not when you would be the one risking me in the first place.”

“You would be an asset to us, you would have so much more.”

“I would have exile, and I would be alone.”

His heart breaks, “Talia. Please.”

“I love you, too. But if you ever see me again, it’ll be because I’ve come to kill you. Be a dear and save me the trouble.” 

She presses the gun into his hand. “Here, this is the gun I used to kill your little friend.”

She pushes past him and walks out of the room before his frozen shock turns into an anguished cry.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lovely, ambitious Jane. Everything she wanted to do, gone and wasted. Someone else will have to do it.


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Epilogue.

15 years later, Tomas emerges from his dingy office into the back alley for a cigarette. Bissau is humid this time of year. Too humid for his lacklustre ceiling fan. Rachel keeps asking him to repair it, but somehow he never gets around to it. It wouldn’t do any good against this mugginess though, which has nowhere to dissipate to.

“I take it you’ve come to make good on your promise to me.” He says, head bowed as he takes a drag.

Natasha emerges from the shadowed doorway she’d been leaning in. She shrugs in response. “Nobody else cares about you anymore.”

“But you?”

“I know that forgiveness is not in your nature.”

“No, I suppose not.”

Her knife point finds it’s home buried in the hollow of his throat, she holds him close to her as he collapses against her, eyes blown wide, blood gurgling out of his mouth. She strokes his hair back, and he knows she can hear him say it, “Do svidaniya, moya lyubov.”

End.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Loki's background is very loosely based on Kim Philby, but here he's nowhere near the sociopath that Philby evidently was.
> 
> Jane's research is even more loosely based on Grace Hopper's, actually, I just waft a slight whiff of Hopper's work in Jane's direction, the rest is purely me having done no significant research into software engineering.
> 
> Natasha is as close to her awesome self as I could get her. Loki likes to call her Natalia because it's her more formal name, nobody else uses it so they've flipped it to become a personal endearment between them.
> 
> Please excuse any anachronisms, misappropriations, or wonky Britishisms.
> 
> The title is from Daughter's song Still.


End file.
